That’s an interesting question. I was 7, going on 8, when we entered the 1970s. I remember crying in 1970 because I wanted to go and see Bozo the Clown in person at the Palace cinema in Cork. You wouldn’t really do that as an adult would you? I did end up going, thankfully 😀.
I don’t remember much about 1971, but I remember starting to get crushes on girls in 1972, when I was 10. I found girls attractive before then, but in 1972 it felt more like falling in love. That was also the year that I got into pop music. From then on, I’d be more likely to spend my money on LP records rather than toys.
If I had to choose a time, perhaps it was once I started secondary school when I was 12, in 1974. I do a survey of 1974 in my 1974 Music Memories Post. At secondary school, I started thinking in terms of careers. I also started thinking about religion and philosophy in a deeper way. In truth, if someone teleported me back to October 1974, I don’t really think that I’d feel any different than I do today. So, I felt like a grown up at 12.
Another momentous time was when I started work. I wanted to be a metalwork teacher, and one pathway to that was to get an apprenticeship in an engineering trade. The benefit was that those who came from a trade background had their teacher-training course paid for and got a weekly allowance. Anyway, I was only 15 when I started as an apprentice maintenance fitter/turner. I started mixing with older teenagers and adults. Again, I started to feel more grown up. As it happened, I didn’t spend much time working as a metalwork teacher. Since then, I’ve been in Christian work or in IT education.
Then, when we had kids in the 1990s, and when I discovered Nintendo and Supermario etc., I started to feel more like a kid again at times 😀.
So how will I weave my Christian propaganda into this post? 😀 I spent so much time on my longwinded 1974 Music Memories post that I’m not going to say much. One point I can make is that God wants us to be like children in some respects and not to be like children in other respects.
Be Like Children
Matthew 18:3
“Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
1 Peter 2:2
“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.”
Do Not Be Like Children
1 Corinthians 14:20
“Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”
Ephesians 4:14
“So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine…”
You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out how you can reconcile these. We all know what it is to take a childlike delight in something and to be eager to learn. And we also know what it is to be childish in a bad sense – like me crying because I wasn’t allowed to see Bozo the Clown or being unduly influenced by bad company.
And however old I get, I’ll always remember that I’m a child of God. I think of the line from a modern worship song – “I’m no longer a slave to fear,
I am a child of God.”
John 1:11-13
11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Hibernia Gospel 